This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Azure Active Directory Identity Blog articles.
Hello!
This is Sue Bohn, Director of Program Management for Identity and Access Management. I’m delighted to introduce this post for our new Voice of the ISV blog series. In this series, our Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partners share best practices for integrating applications with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) and insights about their experience. I hope you enjoy learning about their real-life experiences as much as I do!
Today’s post is from monday.com, one of the market’s leading collaboration and communication apps for teams. monday.com is a fast-growing start-up with offices in Tel Aviv and New York City. Elina Papernaya and Guy Asinovsky from monday.com describe how they configured single sign-on (SSO) in Azure AD for their application to appeal to enterprise customers and the opportunities that came about as a result of that decision.
Market opportunity drives integration with Azure AD
monday.com is a workplace management tool that teams use for collaboration and communication. The platform is built around the principle of transparency so that all information is available to every user, empowering each employee. We believe that when you make information transparent, it changes the way that you see work and helps you celebrate success. That also means that security is really important and has to be an integral part of the product. When we realized that our enterprise accounts needed both tighter security and easier sign-on capability, we decided to integrate SSO capability into the product.
From a business perspective, we knew SSO would help us compete more effectively in the market. SSO is often an IT or security requirement. Many organizations won’t work with a vendor who can’t support it. SSO has so many advantages; reducing help desk costs and improving security and compliance. It also makes it easier for end users by automatically signing them in when they are connected to the network.
For us, it was a no brainer. Azure AD is a major identity provider and many of our customers were already using it. It made sense to integrate with Azure AD and enable SSO for our existing enterprise client base — and to attract new clients.
Microsoft smooths the integration process
Integration can be daunting but the actual process was smooth, due in large part to Microsoft. First, we did some integration work ourselves. Then the Azure AD team contacted us about publishing an official app through the Azure Marketplace.
We worked with other identity providers, so we were familiar with integration specifications, but the Microsoft process was the most straightforward. It wasn’t a tedious experience and didn’t require extra information – just the data that you would need for this type of integration. The timetable, methodology, and terminology were clear.
After we finished the integration work, we received instructions and directions to configure and test the product. Then Microsoft reviewed it, completed final testing, and sent us the documentation so we could publish to the Azure AD application gallery. Altogether, the process took about 1.5 months. There was only one engineer working on the project from our side, and it was much easier than we expected. We were happy about the entire process.
Azure AD helps monday.com stand out in the enterprise tier
Integrating with Azure AD was the right decision, and it put us in a strong competitive position. A large percentage of our clients are enterprises using Azure AD. The benefit for corporate customers who are already Microsoft users is reduced friction. They can just connect our product with an Azure AD account without spending a lot of time setting it up.
Today, when we compete for enterprise-level customers, SSO is a good selling point for us. In the past, we lost deals because we didn’t support SSO. Now, when we fill out a security questionnaire, supporting Azure AD with SSO helps us get the biggest customers that we’re going after.
Working with Microsoft has been such a positive experience that we’re considering a deeper integration with user provisioning as our next step to enhance the app.
Learn more
I hope you were inspired by monday.com’s integration story. You can learn more about monday.com’s integration experience here. You can expect another ISV partner story in the next month. In the meantime, check out the documentation below if you are interested to learn more.
Customers can now easily request apps to be added in Azure AD App Gallery from here.
Azure AD now has more Cloud Integrations and User Provisioning apps, which you can see from here.
It is easy for customers to find and use the apps from Azure AD App Gallery. Partners can list their apps in the Azure AD App Gallery for free, starting from here.
To support existing integrations, you can submit the App Update requests from here.